


Purchase

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Threesome - M/M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-14
Updated: 2009-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:37:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikami and L can remember, but the price they have paid is high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purchase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eltea](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Eltea), [Tierfal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/gifts).



> I have no real explanation as to who the 'they' in this story are, at the beginning there. I have this awful suspicion that my brain has crossed it over with the shinigami in _Bleach_ but, uh, so long as we don't analyse it too hard, we'll all be fine.
> 
> Written as a Valentine's Day gift for two utterly magnificent girls, who make my life so awesom: Tierfal and Eltea! I love you both. ♥;
> 
> Spoilers for real names. Unbeta'd.

Teru Mikami can remember.  
That wasn't how it was supposed to be, he knows that, but time and space had been played with; manipulated. The rules had been considered, found lacking, and summarily discarded, because They, in their wisdom, had decided that this would be his punishment: a life of _remembering_.

L Lawliet can also remember.  
He can remember because there is no reason for him not to, but also because he believes in completion and full-knowledge, and to forget would be in direct violation of those principles. He bears the knowledge like a hollow cross upon his back, and it gives his shoulders a reason to be bowed.

So Teru and L can both remember.  
Sometimes the two of them come together in silence, at strange hours. They meet in the narrow angles of the hallway, perhaps, or in the dark hollow of the bathroom, where external light glints in at the small window and reflects off the glass of the shower cabinet. Often they converge upon the kitchen at 3:18AM; gather, as a pair of shadows, at the small round table. L might have a slice of blueberry cheesecake, left from the day before, and Mikami will cradle a mug of thick, black coffee in hands. Sometimes their hands meet in between plate and mug, sometimes their hands trace invisible images upon the wooden surface of the table, sometimes their hands bind together; sometimes their hands push apart. Neither of them will speak,and the darkling air between them will ache with _what might have been_ and _that which was. _  
In the morning, they discard the past, because the morning brings the daylight, and the warmth, and, most of all, because the daytime belongs to the innocent third of their unspoken triumvirate.

Light Yagami does not remember.  
He discusses the Kira Case using the past tense, and finds it rather fascinating. He sits on the Persian rug before the fireplace, surrounded by law books in English and in Japanese, and makes well-considered notes which will help find the solution to their whatever their current case may be. He works hard with the two of them, harder than both of them, perhaps – the daytime belongs to the criminals they hunt and catch – and, most of all, he believes in justice, justice which runs pure and bright from a soul like his; justice which can save the weak, and mould the strong.

L and Teru to do not believe. The one of them never did, and the other has lost his faith in the twilight paths of memory.  
But, when the daylight turns to evening, and the evening turns to starlit dusk, and they find themselves all together in the glow of the fire and the Persian rug, none of that matters, as their three voices curl in wisps of conversation. The simple domesticity of it, stoked and warmed by the way Light views family and affection, without even considering the matter, crawls beneath the skins of the two orphans and leaves them feeling whole. The taste of Light himself, when conversation pools at their feet and becomes meaningless, in comparison with the touch of warm hands on warm skin, firelight dappled over their bodies, and the rug soft against their elbows, intoxicates their very minds. When the moon is still bright, and night has not yet crept her hands into their minds and sent them wandering through the shadows, in those hours, when they finally retire amongst cool-warm sheets, and hold Light in their arms between them, then they remember, also, oh saving grace, why it was that they'd sold their souls to buy his innocence.  
The price had been worth his innocence.

But they would have offered up the entire universe, to buy his love, had someone ever asked it of them.


End file.
